The
New York Times published a
recent article by Rod Nordland, entitled, “A
Mass Migration Crisis, and It May Yet Get Worse.” Recognizing
that the worldwide mass migration crisis can get worse is vitally
important, but understanding the devastation of past mass migration
crises is also important if leaders and citizens are to apply the
most humane responses to relieve current conditions.

Population
geneticists have studied human mass migrations and have information
about what we call ancient history and even pre-history. So I hoped
geneticists would weigh in on the current worldwide mass migration
question, but since they have not – as yet – I, as someone who
has worked with population geneticists and read their research and
their books, will.

The
New York Times
article says the migration of
millions of people heralds a new age. It is a new age but not a new
crisis. The Times reported that at 60 million the current crisis of
refugees pouring from the Middle East and Africa into Europe signals
a new age because there are now more human refugees in the world
“than at any other time in recorded history.” 60 million is a
major crisis, but taken as a percentage, it is comparable to earlier
mass migration crises that challenged or devastated previous people
and places. Given the population of more than 7 billion in the world
today, 60 million is 0.85 percent of the world’s total population.
Other eras had equal and higher percentages of mass migrants. And
humans survived, settled, and prevailed.

Population
geneticists recorded earlier times of mass migrations and settlements
on all continents, and those crises are imprinted on our human DNA.
Geneticists distinguish between intercontinental mass migrations that
increased with new transportation around 1500, and earlier
intracontinental migrations of indigenous people. They identify
three intercontinental mass migrations:

1.
“The movement of modern humans from Africa to Asia,” estimated
to be as long ago as 100,000 years ago.

2.
“The arrival of modern humans in Australia,” believed to be about
60,000 years ago.

And
3. “The entry into Europe [that] occurred about 45,000 years ago,”
corresponding with the disappearance of the Neanderthals. These
migrations were caused by upheavals in the environment and conflicts
among people.

The
New York Times article says
the current mass migrations are a result of “failed states,
unending wars, intractable conflicts.” Humans are fleeing because
of “persecution, poverty, ethnic and religious strife and war.”
This was the case, according to geneticists, in ancient times as
well. But so were natural and environmental disasters. The reporter
describes how climate change is roiling societies, and explains that
Syria is gripped by a prolonged drought that began before the
never-ending war. The detail in the article that also caught my
attention is the description of the large parts of sub-Saharan Africa
that are becoming uninhabitable.

This reminder about uninhabitable
environments is one that harks back to earlier generations. When I
did my family’s genealogy and did DNA comparisons, I discovered my
own connections to mass migrations and human DNA history.

When
Roots DNA in London used the Cambridge University database to trace
my DNA, the geneticists informed me that because my DNA and my
father’s DNA, traced by the geneticists, Dr.
Michael Hammer and Dr. Elizabeth Wood, of the Human Evolutionary
Genetics Lab at the University of Arizona, matched a small minority
of humans who are almost extinct, our DNA was rare. Some of our DNA
matches were found only in people living in refugee camps across
Africa and the Middle East. They said the majority of West Africans
and African American descendants have maternal mitochondrial DNA
classified as haplogroup L1 and L2, but mine is haplogroup L3. They
explained that haplogroup was the small group of ancient humans who
migrated in-and-out of Africa 60,000 to 100,000 years ago.

My
family’s DNA is unique, not only in terms of African and ancient
human mass migrations, but in terms of colonial and modern Western
world migrations. Geneticists say the mass movement of humans from
Africa to the Americas during slavery was the largest example of
“mass migration or colonization” of people moving from one
continent to another. I read books such as L.L. Cavalli-Sforza’s,
The History and Geography of
Human Genes, to understand the
full meaning, not only of human DNA, history and the interblending of
modern people who migrated and settled, but of ancient human
conflicts and mass migrations. So the news of the current migration
crisis, the movement of people from war-torn Syria, other places in
the Middle East, and other environmentally and economically
devastated parts of the world to more habitable places – is
reminiscent of human history, as told by the geneticists.

Our entire DNA tells a story of
migrations, wars, conquests, settlements, resettlements, and man-made
and natural crises. Population geneticists tell a story of human
origin, migration, blending and survival. When I traced the first
millennium migration of my main African ancestors, the Asante, Fante
and Akuapem people of Ghana, I tracked how these ancient ancestors
were soldiers and farmers to the kings of Ancient Ghana, before they
migrated south. The Asante and Fante Akan people resided in the
north when it was a rain forest, before the region was parched by
droughts and became the Sahara Desert.

Population
geneticists also describe the impact of mass migrations on the Bantu,
when farmers and soldiers invaded, conquered and settled with
indigenous hunter-gathering people in Africa.

After
I completed researching my major West African Ghanaian Akan
ancestors, I researched the smaller minor groups of indigenous people
my Akan ancestors – the Asantes and Fantes – conquered, settled
and blended. When I telephoned an Asante ancestral relative now
living in Brooklyn, New York to ask to interview his Guan wife, he
said she could not speak to me, because when they were married, she
agreed never again to speak of her Guan ancestry. The Guans are a
small ancestral group of indigenous people and farmers who blended
with my Akan ancestors. They became the people of Akuapem when Akan
soldiers conquered them and settled with them on their farms. When I
researched my Guan ancestors, I discovered that some Guan groups and
other small indigenous groups were not counted in the Ghana Census.

Mass
migration, like conquest, is complex, so we need to view the current
mass migrations in terms of what is shown in our DNA. We are all
interblended, interconnected with human groups who migrated and
settled before. What formerly was lost to history can now be
recovered with the help of DNA.